Is Paizo censoring criticism about its recent abandoned support for A-O-Nethys?

[Shmendrich]

A couple days ago I made a post criticizing the recent change to abandon Paizo's support for Archive of Nethys.

I dont believe I broke any rule, and yet my post was deleted without any feedback or message.

Is it now against the rules to discuss the topic?
Or to criticize paizo?

[BotBrain]

Given the multiple threads with triple digit numbers of responses, discussing it is not against the rules. Did you include anything that counts as profanity? That normally gets things deleted.

[rainzax]

Probably for baiting would be my guess.

=)

[Mathmuse]

I had responded to that thread just before it was removed, and I began with quoting Shmendrich about greed to state my disagreement. Shmendrich's post was a lot of speculation based on the greedy side of human nature rather than the historic policies of Paizo.

I do not recall any profanity.

[TOZ]

Shmendrich wrote:

Is it now against the rules to discuss the topic?

Or to criticize paizo?

No, but publicly discussing moderation decisions is.

[Kelseus]

lol. The 1000 posts on the topic seem to indicate otherwise.

[Maya Coleman]

It's not against the rules to discuss dissenting opinions nor is it against the rules to publicly discuss moderation decisions. If you look at my posts, I've welcomed discussion for moderation decisions, and as said previously in this thread, the multiple threads about the AoN discussion are proof enough that discussing it isn't against the rules.

Your post was removed for baiting! As always, if you ever have any questions about why a post or comment was removed, you can ask me here publicly or in DMs! I value myself in being as transparent as they come!

[TriOmegaZero]

Thanks for the correction Maya! I look forward to respectful discussion of moderation choices!

[Maya Coleman]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Thanks for the correction Maya! I look forward to respectful discussion of moderation choices!

Always! I believe we've also had a thread before where I took feedback for things. I'm always open and happy to explain things!

In the future, we're really aiming to have the new forums allow for more transparent moderation, like leaving comments so people know why something was removed. It's still a while away, but it's an important part of the search!

[Azothath]

you can find the Guidelines *here* there may be more somewhere else as I recall some public moderation chat

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

IIRC a post can be deleted as well for quoting a post that is deleted for going against the Guidelines.

[BotBrain]

I think that's more a cleaning up thing than a "you broke the rules" thing.

[Maya Coleman]

BotBrain is correct in that regard! When one post breaks the guidelines, we remove all the posts that reply to that og post so as to remove the entire altercation related to the rule breaking, NOT because the people who responded to it broke the rule. It's just to put out the fire.

[Maya Coleman]

Azothath wrote:

you can find the Guidelines *here* there may be more somewhere else as I recall some public moderation chat

These guidelines will also soon be updated as some of them are phrased a little too ambiguously and show a sign of the times in which they were written! My prosed revised guidelines are under review!

[Shmendrich]

Maya Coleman wrote:

It's not against the rules to discuss dissenting opinions nor is it against the rules to publicly discuss moderation decisions. If you look at my posts, I've welcomed discussion for moderation decisions, and as said previously in this thread, the multiple threads about the AoN discussion are proof enough that discussing it isn't against the rules.

Your post was removed for baiting! As always, if you ever have any questions about why a post or comment was removed, you can ask me here publicly or in DMs! I value myself in being as transparent as they come!

Giving my honest opinion along with some background for it is "baiting"?

All I discussed was my reasoning/story to move away from DnD/WotC, to compare it to what I see as the same (currently emerging) pattern of behavior in Paizo.

I am expressing my frustration regarding that anti-player pattern of behaviour, in the desire that the relevant people at Paizo see why SOME people might have started playing PF2, and what might keep or scare them away from it.

I honestly do not see how this is "baiting"

The worst words/statements I used were "Lazy" and "Greedy".
If those are now here categorized as insults or unacceptable, then I would recommend the new rules to be clear about that.

[Mathmuse]

Shmendrich wrote:

Giving my honest opinion along with some background for it is "baiting"?

The definition of "baiting" here is 1a from Merrian-Webster: "to try to make angry with criticism or insults." On the Internet some people bait just to get other people angry enough to respond. It is trollish behavior. Shmendrich's opinion reveals an unhappy view of life that does not fit Paizo's actual background.

Declaring Paizo employees greedy and lazy is unjustified. I recommend reading their history, such as Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 0 (2002)—The Thrill of Starting Something New, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, Year 7, Year 8, Year 9, and Year 10. Year 10 was 2012, 14 years ago, so personnel and circumstances have changed since then, but Paizo has always been a publishing company trying to win over customers. Unfortunately, sometimes they had to drop beloved product lines because those lines were not profitable enough to ensure Paizo's survival.

Survival requires revenue, so they have been seeking revenue, but that is not greed.

[Shmendrich]

Mathmuse wrote:

Shmendrich wrote:

Giving my honest opinion along with some background for it is "baiting"?

The definition of "baiting" here is 1a from Merrian-Webster: "to try to make angry with criticism or insults." On the Internet some people bait just to get other people angry enough to respond. It is trollish behavior. Shmendrich's opinion reveals an unhappy view of life that does not fit Paizo's actual background.

Declaring Paizo employees greedy and lazy is unjustified. I recommend reading their history, such as Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 0 (2002)—The Thrill of Starting Something New, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, Year 7, Year 8, Year 9, and...

By that extremely vague metric, any criticism is baiting.

I agree Paizo has been great for years. I never contested that. I loved Paizo when it came out. DnD4 was not good, and PF1 did great, it gave us the DnD 3.6 we needed.

Same way I loved blizzard when they made Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft 1-2. But companies change. Blizzard today is not the same one it was back then. And Paizo doesnt seems to be either.

June 8, 2026, when CEO Jim Butler announced a major restructuring and a reduction in workforce.

Not even 2 months later, they are already doing anti-player changes such as this with Archive of nethys. About 1 year since the new administration came in. Which to me seems to indicate a core change in how Paizo is handled from the top down.

As to why I called them lazy, that comes from their justification for this change. If you have read it, it boils down to the following points:

- They claim maintaining this arrangement with AoN is somehow too difficult, complicated and expensive.
- They claim it makes their IP's permissions and ownership confusing (As in: some people think they can use assets from AoN)

And...I just dont see either of those making any sense. Yeah, I can see some people reusing some images or assets from AoN where as they themselves do not have permission, but that will happen regardless. People will scan books or copy images from the PDFs.
Legal agreements do not change every few months to require a full legal team to review. These arrangements are usually done once. (For example, DnD's OGL). So that doesn't make any sense either.

To me that seems to indicate a lack of understanding of players and the way we consume Paizo's products.

I could go into more detail of my argument again, but since I still do not know what made my post count as "Baiting" then I better play it safe and not repeat much of my argument.

[Karys]

It was likely flagged as baiting because that post was making wild accusations and misinformation implying Paizo was having AoN being taken down for some nefarious greedy plot. Which is very different from criticizing the actual things that happened.

Also you do understand Paizo is in the middle of a heated legal battle where another company stole an unbelievable amount of their product, and thereby revenue, right? It's no surprise this last year has seen company restructuring and cutting business agreements that were costing them money. That's not greed, that's trying to keep the lights on. I dislike these decisions as much as anyone else but it's an unfortunate part of running a business in a time like this. Are they the right decisions? Heck if I know, but it's plain to see the Diamond fiasco has completely upended their plans for some time now.

Paizo isn't some multibillion dollar company that can just keep pushing through Diamond/JP Morgan taking a significant amount of inventory like nothing happened.

[Maya Coleman]

Shmendrich wrote:

By that extremely vague metric, any criticism is baiting.

I will say I agree with you that the definition is far too lose, and part of what takes time in my job as moderator here is reading and considering when something is just a valid criticism vs when something is actually trying to start a fight. There have been a LOT of valid criticisms about this decision, which is why the vast majority of those criticisms remain on our website and always will, even when we get new forums. I left an entire thread criticizing Demiplane with the purpose of summarizing that criticism and passing onto them so they can work on their UX. So, I just wanted to say I'm with you on this being pretty vague and open, and I use it as more of a place to start my analysis rather than an end all be all.

I want to preface my next paragraph by saying there is no malice in this at all! I am just stating the facts of the situation and want to give you a little more perspective in the hopes that it may help you understand why the post was considered baiting and why it had to be removed rather than edited!

I and my team have been working tirelessly at this company since I started. I myself am even still working through thousands of emails about this topic and taking in all that feedback so I can relay it to the team and we can take steps to not only regain goodwill but also make sure we have SOME kind of free resource that provides the benefits AoN did and does WHILE still doing my regular job. We also, as has been said, are working very hard to get our product back from Diamond while also still making new books at the same time.

We are regular nerds just like you doing the best we can. Hopefully you can understand how it could be seen as baiting to use the words "lazy" and "greedy" in this context. I absolutely understand also that you may still feel that way, and I'm not saying this to try to change your mind, but rather just to show you how it could be seen as baiting and explain why the post was then removed despite the valid criticisms that it still contained. The only way to keep your post would have been to reword how you called us those things, and I think that paraphrasing posts to edit them is a massive overstep that I don't think is fair to anyone. I don't mind removing a sentence or two, and when I do, I add a statement at the bottom of the edited post to indicate what I did, but it was too much of the aforementioned baiting to remove that was intertwined with your valid points. For that reason, the whole post had to be removed.

I hope this sheds a bit more light on the process! Do continue to ask questions though if you have them!

[Shmendrich]

Maya Coleman wrote:

Shmendrich wrote:

By that extremely vague metric, any criticism is baiting.

I will say I agree with you that the definition is far too lose, and part of what takes time in my job as moderator here is reading and considering when something is just a valid criticism vs when something is actually trying to start a fight. There have been a LOT of valid criticisms about this decision, which is why the vast majority of those criticisms remain on our website and always will, even when we get new forums. I left an entire thread criticizing Demiplane with the purpose of summarizing that criticism and passing onto them so they can work on their UX. So, I just wanted to say I'm with you on this being pretty vague and open, and I use it as more of a place to start my analysis rather than an end all be all.

I want to preface my next paragraph by saying there is no malice in this at all! I am just stating the facts of the situation and want to give you a little more perspective in the hopes that it may help you understand why the post was considered baiting and why it had to be removed rather than edited!

I and my team have been working tirelessly at this company since I started. I myself am even still working through thousands of emails about this topic and taking in all that feedback so I can relay it to the team and we can take steps to not only regain goodwill but also make sure we have SOME kind of free resource that provides the benefits AoN did and does WHILE still doing my regular job. We also, as has been said, are working very hard to get our product back from Diamond while also still making new books at the same time.

We are regular nerds just like you doing the best we can. Hopefully you can understand how it could be seen as baiting to use the words "lazy" and "greedy" in this context. I absolutely understand also that you may still feel that way, and I'm not saying this to try to change your mind, but rather just to show you how it could be seen as baiting and explain why the post...

Well, that leaves me with nothing to go on. What I am reading here is "We have no clear definition for baiting, therefore, its baiting if I say so".

I also understand Paizo is in financial trouble, and that; as a roleplaying nerd is certainly disheartening. But I fail to see how the JP morgan horrible fiasco is at all related to AoN. And I already explained why I dont see how AoN's licence would cost much (if any) money/maintenance to Paizo. I could certainly be wrong. I am not a licencing expert. And if I am wrong, maybe I would have found out while discussing in that post.

And look...I understand the world is not black and white, and I understand moderation is hard. But I also KNOW my criticism was not intended to start a FIGHT, but rather to start a dialogue about it from my point of view. And yeah, my point of view included a harsh critique. Of that I am fairly aware. That was intended because I am heavily disappointed with this decision made by Paizo. And I expected to see both points of view in that discussion, people both agreeing or disagreeing with me. I do not see disagreement as "baiting"

Harsh criticism is not on its own baiting. Harsh criticism can be fair, or unfair, depending on what one is criticising and what is the critique.
Think of what you consider a real bad movie, and tell me "harsh criticism" of that movie would count as baiting. (IE: Avatar: The last air bender). I can use word such as "lazy" for the writing, or "greedy" for the budget, and it does not mean I am baiting anyone or anything.

Anyways...This post I think has reached a point where going any deeper would be meaningless.

Your opinion of "baiting" is different from mine, and you are the person with power here.

Although I will say I certainly commend and appreciate your responses on this post. We clearly disagree, but I commend you are open to questions and even criticism about moderation. Even if I disagree with how it was applied.

Cheers, and thanks for your attention.

[Shmendrich]

Karys wrote:

...Also you do understand Paizo is in the middle of a heated legal battle where another company stole an unbelievable amount of their product, and thereby revenue, right? It's no surprise this last year has seen company restructuring and cutting business agreements that were costing them money. That's not greed, that's trying to keep the lights on. I dislike these decisions as much as anyone else but it's an unfortunate part of running a business in a time like this. Are they the right decisions? Heck if I know, but it's plain to see the Diamond fiasco has completely upended their plans for some time now.

Paizo isn't some multibillion dollar company that can just keep pushing through Diamond/JP Morgan taking a significant amount of inventory like nothing happened.

This was part of my criticism.

I do not see how an agreement with AoN would cost them much (if any) money. Its as easy as signing a licensing contract/agreement of the sorts:

"AoN is free to publish Paizo content.
- This only applies to text, and images which meet the following requirements.
-- (List of requirements/guidelines of images AoN was allowed to use)
- This only applies to 2e.aonprd.com
- Newly published content, cannot be published at all until 2 natural months from the official date of release by Paizo.
- This licence is perpetual to any current and future content
- This licence can be rescinded by Paizo at any time, and without any reasoning or justification
- If this licence is rescinded, AoN will have 30 days to remove all content from their website
- Paizo can at any point and indiscriminately and at will exclude any content from this agreement. This will be done in the shape of an official request to AoN (By formal letter, or email), and AoN agrees to address and remove any such content in no less than 10 business days from the day of the request.
- AoN cannot directly nor indirectly profit from any content covered by this agreement. Any profits found to to breach this clause, will be surrendered to Paizo"

Plus/minus whatever legal jargon required. Of course the above is heavily simplified simply to provide a basic concept.

Of course I am no legal scholar, but I am fairly familiar with some contracts, including some I have handled (Some about art specifically), and of course I am somewhat familiar with the DnD OGL fiasco. And from my (limited) knowledge, there's no reason this would need to ever be touched again for years or even decades.

Yeah, Paizo also said AoN content led to some people thinking some images and other copyrighted content was FREE to be used. But...I mean...I just dont see how this affects Paizo's bottom line.

Piracy will always exist
People using Paizo content will always exist

To me this just reminds me of disney or nintendo suing a childcare center because they used an image of mario/mickey mouse. 99% of this "copyright infringement" Does not lead to any real losses. And yeah. I know Paizo is not nintendo, but they did mention them having to chase people for copyright infringement...and it just makes me wonder if Paizo is like nintendo in that regards, or if they are just chasing actual infringement which might actually hit their bottomline.

If Paizo wastes a lot of money chasing "copyright infringement" because a 17 year old kid used a picture of a Paizo character in their Twitch stream...Then thats just paizo not understanding reality in 2026.

And I am not saying Paizo is doing this. I do not know. But their statement does mention them spending money doing SOME form of copyright enforcement. And I just cant see how anything worth actual enforcement would come from AoN. And IF it did, just ask AoN to add a BIG "Copyright by Paizo. Please do not distribute" watermark to any and all picture/content. This would deter anyone not WILLINGLY breaking copyright. And if they are WILLINGLY breaking copyright, they can get the content from many sources other than AoN.

[Driftbourne]

Shmendrich wrote:

I do not see how an agreement with AoN would cost them much (if any) money. Its as easy as signing a licensing contract/agreement of the sorts:

Have you read all 7 of Paizo's licenses?

Paizo's licenses.

The contract or licenses between AoN and Paizo isen't the issue. It's anyone else using it wrong that is.

That might be someone using Art for a home game, not something Paizo is going to file a DMCA over. But it could be a sign that technology is changing how games are played, and Paizo is trying to adapt.

It could also be a 3rd party publisher or website that didn't read the licenses first and is using content they can't use.

It could be a 3rd party publisher or website that did everything right but forgot to include the license notice correctly.

There are different licenses for using Rules and separate licenses to use Paizo's IP content (Setting names and places, etc.).

There is no one right answer, because every use case could be different. Commercial contracts are often one-of-a-kind deals.

The changes to Paizo's and AoN license or contract, whatever it is, it helps avoid a lot of confusion for lots of people using AoN in a multitude of different ways. Even if all Paizo does is send a notice for someone to fix something I listed above, that still takes time and money to do; even friendly legal notices are still legal notices.

Shmendrich wrote:

Piracy will always exist

As long as there is piracy, there will be people fighting piracy.

Shmendrich wrote:

People using Paizo content will always exist

People using new Paizo content will only get new content as long as Paizo is in business.

I'm out of time. Have fun; I hope you find an answer that works for you.

[Rysky]

“I want a defined and exact definition of the rule for the purpose of doing/avoiding/skirting it in explicitness”.

Yeeeeeah, no, the defined vagueness is intentional for moderation so there’s not 50,000 rules that keep growing, and so people can’t try and rules lawyer out of it like you’re attempting to.

[Driftbourne]

Rysky wrote:

“I want a defined and exact definition of the rule for the purpose of doing/avoiding/skirting it in explicitness”.

Yeeeeeah, no, the defined vagueness is intentional for moderation so there’s not 50,000 rules that keep growing, and so people can’t try and rules lawyer out of it like you’re attempting to.

So we need clearly defined conditions and traits?

If you use the baiting trait in a comment, you get the disappearing comment condition. Would the more specific baiting comment override a general baiting comment?

Or would it be actions and reactions? Someone uses a baiting action, and Maya gets a reaction or reactive strike. That assumes Maya's had a turn to gain her reaction. Although I imagine that Maya gets a reaction as soon as initiative is rolled.

It might just be better if everything in the forums is done in character; that way, no one is directly attacking the players.

[Cleavis Morerats]

A goblin merchant enters the room.

" I always said fights should be fair; that's why I always sell arrows to both sides. Now I just got one question: Who wants to buy some arrows?"

[Maya Coleman]

Small reminder I use xe/xem/they/them pronouns!

Also, a lot of these comments have been flagged as baiting, but as we are discussing what baiting is and I'm trying to get real feedback for this, removing them would completely defeat that purpose, so I'm leaving them! No one is baiting here. We're just having a discussion about baiting and I believe Shmendrich is just restating their sentiments. It's better phrased this time since it's not laced with insults! Thanks for having a civil conversation with me about this!

[Maya Coleman]

Oh, also, I think the point of this thread has been made! No, we're not censoring criticism. I've proved that here and in our many threads about the topic. For that reason, I'm going to lock the thread but not hide it so you can still see it happened and to not suppress the opinions!